Shades of Grey
by Nol
Summary: An assortment of shorts about various Sindar, including Celeborn, Daeron and Luthien.
1. Love's Wisdom

This is for Sphinx, who requested a drabble about "Celeborn. Anyplace. Anytime."

* * *

LOVE'S WISDOM

She makes you terribly angry. She is golden, and beautiful - so beautiful! - and she loves you. Yet she hurts you. Galadriel, you have learnt to think of her, though she has taught you her other names. Galadriel who has a secret world and a secret past that she may enter at will, but where you may never follow. Galadriel who has powers that sometimes make her seem as though she is other than an Elf, like, like -  
  
- He appears through the trees, and you almost forget to wipe away your tears of furtive anger and frustration. You adore him. Strong and tall - so tall! - with a kind of beauty that seems more otherworldly than hers, sometimes. Light, yes, but shadow as well. Silver hair that falls past his waist, and a smile that dims starlight. You understand his smile. You understand _him_, most of the time. Except for that hint in his eyes, so ageless and bottomless, of something, something - a light that you will never know.  
  
The thought almost makes you angry again. You wonder if all kinds of love are so difficult.  
  
"You remind me of someone I knew," he says as he settles easily on the bough beside you. He has taught you never to stand on ceremony. So unlike _her_.  
  
"Who?" you ask, a little more sharply than you intended. But he will forgive you. More likely, he will hardly notice.  
  
"Myself," he says. "Your heart is like to mine."  
  
He twists the strange ring on his index finger. You know that it is no work of the Sindar.   
  
He puts an awkward arm around your shoulder - it bothers you, how thin you are, although you have already been assured that your beauty will one day rival your mother's - and gives you a gentle, fatherly hug.  
  
"She will want to see you," he says softly. There is an almost-placating tone in his voice that is very unlike him. "But it is you who must go to her, Celebrían."  
  
Everything seems to fall into place after that, and suddenly you want to smile. "Yes, Father," you say, pleased, and a little shy.  
  
"I will be along presently," he smiles, and lets you go.  
  
You look back on him before rounding a curve and you think, of course. Of course he knows.


	2. The Others

Werecat99 asked for a ficlet about Melkor, "lusting after Lúthien, or Beren, or both." Behold, he lusteth.

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THE OTHERS

There is a black hollow in his crown where there should be light. It has been prised out like any ordinary jewel. In his heart, there is darkness where joy should have been. There is fear.  
  
Elves are not the ones to be feared, he thinks. They have beauty, yes, but no power. Ambition is the lifeblood of the Noldor, and yet they will sacrifice it for their sense of self. They are unworthy foes. No, the danger lies in these others – these ragtags and half-breeds of the world. These fey children, strange and enchanting, ready to risk themselves for little reason – and he knows why Lúthien Melian's daughter danced for him, he knows of her mortal lover now – they are the ones who will upset his theme. They are unbound, still ignorant. In ignorance lies their power, and power is beauty.  
  
He thinks of her, wild abandon in her eyes as she twirled about him, breathless and half-naked, laughing like an elven-child. Her power strikes through him like lightning. And for the first time since Fingolfin son of Finwë betrayed himself in madness to defy what was so far above him, Melkor grows afraid, and feels his now-hideous body weighed down, leaden with lust.


	3. Bright Light And Silence

Sothis requested simply a drabble on Lúthien. So, a 100 words on the morning after.

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BRIGHT LIGHT AND SILENCE

Lúthien lay with Beren and the stars wheeled out of course. Through the eaves of their first home, a shabby treehouse a little smaller than her Doriath prison, she saw them ink out all at once, then reappear, dimmer, dearer, and more distant. The night lost it's sheen in the light that shone from Beren beside her. She felt more solid in his arms than ever before, and was momentarily lost. But then she danced and it was opposite, because she could hear no music, there was no restraint, and Beren was watching her.

Free, she thought. We are free.


	4. Come Back To Me

Elenbarathi asked for "ents and elves", so this one and the next are for her.

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COME BACK TO ME

Of the first to wake the ents was this one, young and wise. And the ents loved him, and went where he went, for he taught them his words and his songs.  
  
Time passed and they lost him, though they sought him long. He was nowhere to be heard.  
  
Many years later, he came upon them, now wrapped in a silence so grievous that it bade the ents to speak of their own loss, that for the first time seemed lighter. Long they spoke of the lost Entwives, and guessed his tale was like, but more hopeless.  
  
At last, a song broke free from him; a shadow, like his name, of his former beauty and glory. His voice was like rust, his language a rough whisper of what he first made, in his own thought, but the ents wept to hear him as he began to sing, _"When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf…"_


	5. En Choir

Warning: This one is so silly it's dangerous. I mean it. It's random and pointless and not too funny. Proceed at risk to judgement.

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EN CHOIR

_F.A., pre-Beren Doriath._  
  
"Tralalalaa.."  
  
"Hoom…"  
  
"Tra la _la_ la la."  
  
"Hoom-hoom-_hoom_-hoom-hoom."  
  
"Tra-la-la-la-lally .."  
  
"Hoom-hoom-hoom-hoom-hoom-hoom …"  
  
"Ahem. Thank you, elves. Lord Fangorn and Co., a moment?"  
  
"Hoom. Far too short a time, a moment. Yes."  
  
"For we who are eternal, indeed. But as it took from bright day to dinner-time for us to complete a single scale, I must beg you to allow me to do the talking. Now."  
  
"Hoom."  
  
"We might have to ask you to leave the Menegroth choir. Not because you don't have the loveliest of voices – you do, I never fail to be amazed, but I do believe there's a conflict of - we do a lot of narrative and that's not –"  
  
"Hoom?"  
  
"- exactly your forte. I mean, our stories are much shorter, much much, and you're, well, detailed, the lists and so on – "  
  
"Excuse me, mister."  
  
"Master Quickbeam?"  
  
"No offence, but no one we know took, like, three hundred years to think of how to introduce ourselves to a girl."  
  
"Queen Melian…"  
  
"Thus causing a bunch of trees.."  
  
"Elves…"  
  
"…to miss the boat. Quite literally."  
  
"On behalf of King Thingol – "  
  
"_Shmingol_. Come on, treeherds. This outing certainly wasn't worth my "The point is not moot, it's Entmoot" bark shirt. Draught-time!"  
  
"Hoom!!"  
  
----------

  
_T.A. 3019, S.R. Lothlórien._  
  
"So, Fangorn forest. I think it's worth the risk. Um, Lord Celeborn?"  
  
"At your own risk, Boromir lad, at your own risk."

* * *

Disclaimer: All characters and locations property of the Tolkien Estate. I borrow.


End file.
